1264 
that they can be depended upon to fur- 
nish the products regularly and in such 
quantities as will supply the demand. 
CO-OPERATIVE MARKETING 
It is hardly possible to understand co- 
operative marketing, without a brief his- 
tory of co-operation. In all ages of 
human history persons have combined 
their interests in some degree for mutual 
protection against adverse conditions. It 
was not until the beginning of the 19th 
century, however, that modern co-opera- 
tive movements took shape. 
The chief of these societies were those 
organized under the teachings’of F. M. 
C. Fourier, a Frenchman. and Robert 
Owen, an Englishman. JFourier’s eco- 
nomic theories were that up to a certain 
degree “Hach should work for all and 
all for each.” In the production of 
wealth, society should be divided into 
“phalanxes, series, and groups.” Hach 
group was to have charge of one kind of 
work, and each series one special branch 
of that work. 
In the distribution of products a cer- 
tain minimum was to be assigned to 
every member of the society, whether 
capable of work or not, the remainder to 
be shared in proportion to the labor per- 
formed, the quality of the labor, and the 
capital invested. 
Robert Owen was the owner of large 
cotton spinning mills at Lanark, Eng- 
land. His theory was that “All men 
are equal.” He obtained the assistance 
of certain benevolently inclined capital- 
ists with whom it was arranged that af- 
ter the capital invested should have re- 
ceived five per cent per annum all the 
profits should be laid aside for the educa- 
tional, religious and moral improvement 
of the workers. 
Owen made the town of Lanark a 
model to be visited and studied by 
philanthropists of all civilized lands. Of 
it he wrote, “For 29 years we did with- 
out magistrates or lawyers, without a 
single legal punishment, without paupers, 
without intemperance or religious ani- 
mosities. We reduced the hours of labor, 
well educated all the children, greatly 
improved the condition of adults, paid 
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PRACTICAL HORTICULTURE 
interest on capital, and cleared 300,000 
pounds ($1,500,000).” 
Out of the impetus given by the teach- 
ings of Fourier and Owen have grown 
the “Rochdale Societies,” “Union Shops,” 
and other organizations for the benefit 
of wage workers, farmers and others. 
Causes That Led to the Movement 
Aneurin Williams, M. P., author of 
“Twenty-Hight Years of Co-partnership, 
Etec.,”’ writes as follows in the Encyclo- 
pedia Britannica: 
“The end of the 18th century and the 
beginning of the 19th were culminating 
days of industrial revolution; when the 
older organizations of society had given 
way to the factory system, and the popu- 
lation of the factory districts was suf 
fering a marliyrdom, with ruin of body 
and degradation of character from un- 
bridled competition, long hours, women’s 
and children’s labor, pauper apprentice- 
ship, great fluctuations of trade and em- 
ployment, dearness and adulteration of 
provisions, the truck system and insani- 
tary homes.” 
The English missionaries sent to India 
about that period, when the power loom 
was installed to take the place of hand 
weavers, reported: “The bones of hand 
weavers are scattered all along the high- 
ways, for they have starved and their 
friends are too poor to bury them.” 
Rochdale Pioneers 
About 1844, 28 poor men at Rochdale, 
Lancashire, England, got together a capi- 
tal of 28 pounds, and opened a little 
shop, which has in all essential particu- 
lars been the model of most of the mod- 
ern co-operative societies. They succeed- 
ed in improving the position of ‘work- 
ingmen by enabling them to buy pure 
provisions at less cost, unadulterated; to 
save money, to pass from retail to whole- 
sale trade, from distribution to manu- 
facturing, ship owning and banking, and 
to live with an object and ideal. 
The principal difference between the 
Rochdale plan and the Robert Owen plan 
was in the method of dealing with the 
profits. The Owen plan provided that 
after five per cent on the investment was 
paid, the profits should be kept for the 
